The European Commission has published, this November, an open consultation on water efficiency in buildings.
The European Commission has been looking at the water performance of buildings and different levels of improvement that can be made using water-saving devices, water-efficient construction, design and renovations, and measuring a building’s performance.
The Buildings’ Water Efficiency initiative is a component of the overall review of the policy on water scarcity and drought as outlined in my earlier post: Water White Paper: The future value of water resources
Water management of buildings is the next “hot topic” for environmental managers and is often accorded a low priority after energy, carbon and wastes management. However, there are a number of initiatives seeking to raise the profile of water management with the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) looking at water footprinting (http://bit.ly/c6es37).
The EU consultation will run until February 2012 with a suite of measures to be proposed in the first half of 2012.
Further information on the documents can be found at http://bit.ly/dIM9Xe